Il contro-summit di Ginevra: WSIS? WE SEIZE!

The World Summit On Infomation Society (WSIS) takes place in Geneva from
the 10th - 12th December, 2003. While the official agenda of this UN/ITU
Summit talks about free access to information, the digital divide and
equality of opportunities, in reality its doors are closed, its
discussions exclusive and the agendas of those who attend it concealed.
What is more, the right to demonstrate and protest has been suspended in
Geneva at this time as the usual parade of despots and tyrants fly in to
Switzerland to define policy for their own citizens, and the rest of the
world, based on the agendas of corporate multinations, media
conglomerates and infrastructure owners.

ABOUT GENEVA 03

Geneva03 is a temporary network of groups and individuals set up to
carry out agitational, educational and communications work during both
the G8 and the WSIS. You can contact us on 00 41 (0) 22 327 16 13, or by
email at prep-l@geneva03.org .

AUTONOMOUS MEDIA

Geneva03 considers it critical to show, during such a display of media
power and control, that independent groups and people have the ability
to create their own media, to share media, self publish, build networks
and communicate freely and autonomously. That is why we have titled our
events during this time WSIS? WE SEIZE! We do not consider that
negotiation and supplication before the altar of the UN will produce
information autonomy for all. Instead, we are taking our autonomy now,
using the means and technologies at our disposal: the Internet, peer to
peer networks, Free and Open Source Software, community wireless
infrastructures, pirate television and radio and streamed media. Beyond
questions of communications technology, We Seize! seeks to open a
wide-ranging discussion on the new social conditions that constitute
today's world about which the WSIS has little or nothing to say: media
concentration, expansive intellectual property regimes, casualised and
immaterial labour and migration.

COMMUNICATION: MORE THAN A RIGHT

We insist that this urge to speak, to hear and be heard, is
irrepressible. The Geneva03 collecitve returns to Geneva following major
attempts at repression during the G8 this year, in which the collective
were targetted by police whilst running an independent media centre. No
charges were brought against the collective, because- whatever the
establishment would like to believe- it is still lawful to freely
express ourselves. We must, however, continue to exercise this ability,
to expand and test it in diverse situations, if we are not to lose the
freedom and potential that defines us as people.

Communication, language and information are essential to understanding
both control and liberation in this new millenium. They are
simultaneously the site of the most repressive and totalitarian
suppression and disciplining we have seen since the 1950s and, we
believe, the basis of a powerful, growing autonomous movement.
Ultimately this movement must cut to the very heart of communication:
for what we are able to articulate, we are able to create. We must speak
of a new world without fear, and with all the creativity, energy and
commitment we can find.

Taking place as part of the WSIS? WE SEIZE! events and actions in
Geneva, the WE SEIZE! Strategic Conference (S-CONF) will take the form
of two days of open discussion and short presentations. S-CONF welcomes
local Genevans, WSIS delegates, NGO members and info-activists alike to
join the debate. The conference is intended to provide allow everyone
involved to explore the key issues involved in information politics
today and to gain a better understanding of this fledgling movement.

HighNoon is a three day streaming event that projects remote
interventions from all over the globe on the world summit on the
information society in geneva. instead of reporting from the summit to
the rest of the world HighNoon works as an interface that confronts and
exposes the rhetorics of the summit by contributions uploaded by
activists from around the globe.